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Proba-V images Mount Everest

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Proba-V – ESA’s smallest Earth-observing mission – overflies Mount Everest, the highest mountain in the world, its peak seen left of centre in this false-colour image.

In honour of World Mountain Day on 11 December, this image depicts the snow-capped Himalayas, with Nepal to the south (with vegetation shown in red) and the bleaker Tibetan Plateau to the north.

Mount Everest, the tallest mountain of the world at nearly 8850 m, is shown in white along with a few of its 8000 m-plus neighbours, including Kangchenjunga (8586 m), the third tallest mountain of the world, to the east of Everest. The Himalayas, which can be translated from Sanskrit as ‘abode of snow’, are the source of many major Asian rivers.

Launched on 7 May 2013, Proba-V is a miniaturised ESA satellite tasked with a full-scale mission: to map land cover and vegetation growth across the entire planet every two days.

Its main camera’s continent-spanning 2250 km swath width collects light in the blue, red, near-infrared and mid-infrared wavebands at 300 m resolution and down to 100 m resolution in its central field of view.

VITO Remote Sensing in Belgium processes and then distributes Proba-V data to users worldwide. An online image gallery highlights some of the mission’s most striking images so far, including views of storms, fires and deforestation.

This 100 m-resolution image was acquired by Proba-V on 27 October 2016.